International College of Ministry

Overview:

The International College of Ministry is an online seminary college. The project began in 2009 on Joomla 1.5
and shared hosting. In 2013, the project was relaunched on a virtual private server and upgraded to Joomla 2.5.
Later in 2015, the site was upgraded again to Joomla 3.x and is currently hosted on the Vivid server. As of 2018, the
site had crossed the 1,500 page mark and continues to grow as new educational material is added.

The site features public and private access. Full college administration function support, multiple content or course
catalogs, online courses featuring streaming video lessons, and automated testing and assignment submissions.

ICM was a concept design build that leveraged the latest design features. The goal was to design a site that fit
a wide screen monitor while at the same time displaying correctly on mobile devices. To make the project even more
complicated, the concept called for the site to "break free" of its borders and overflow into the background. This
was accomplished with a carefully coded template, precise CSS z-index stacking, and alpha-channeling of all the
site graphics. The end result produced a site with multi-layered transparencies that flow across the screen.
Additionally, the the use of tiles in place of a body menu translated perfectly onto mobile devices.

To further enhance the school's features, additional CMS platforms (i.e. OpenSiS, WordPress) were added to provide
marketing function and academic administration tools. Visit the live site at International College of Ministry

Features:

Sticky Menus:

Sticky menus are written with code that attaches the menu to the top or bottom of the browser window. This is
accomplished by coding the menus above and outside of the CSS stack. The sticky code allows the menus to remain
stationary while the rest of the page scrolls. This anchors the menus to a fixed position where they are always
available for the site visitor.

For the ICM project, I decided to use both a top and a bottom sticky menu. The site was expected to host over
1,000 pages and required compartmentalized menus. The sticky menus fit perfectly into this design.

The concept required coding one menu and then flipping the code upside down for the second menu. The site's
main menu was assigned to the top sticky position while the bottom sticky menu hosts off-site links and
administration functions.

Call to Action (CTA):

The call-to-action is a critical component of a site's design. The CTA stands between anynomonys visitors and actual clients. It's the pathway that convers the unknown visitor into a sale.

The CTA I build for the International College of Ministry is a custom concept built upon movement to attract the eye, simplicity, and streaming video.

The CTA box hosts a custom animation I created in Photoshop. The anitmated flying angel repeatedly points to the video play window. It's important that other movement on the page be restricted to a minimum so CTA movement will draw the visitor's eye. Once the CTA movement has the visitor's attention, the pointing hand directs the visitor to a streaming video play button which begins streaming a short clip of the college president welcoming the visitor and further encouraging them to make contact.